Saturday, December 04, 2010

Arnold, eccentric Englishman

Even if you have not heard of the composer Malcolm Arnold (1921-2006), you must have heard his music in movies such as The bridge on the river Kwai or Hobsons' choice. Apart from his film music, he composed inter alia nine symphonies (not my favourites), seventeen concertos (light-weight, but very pleasant), and eleven overtures. Especially in the latter form, he forged his reputation of eccentricity: his Commonwealth Christmas Overture features a prominent part for steel band, and his notorious A Grand, Grand Overture was composed for three vacuum cleaners, one floor polisher, four rifles and orchestra. All in all though, the best introduction to his music is via his dance suites, light but delightful music based on English dances (two sets, 1950/1951), Scottish dances (1957), Cornish dances (1966), Irish dances (1986) and Welsh dances (1988). In a tremendous bargain, the Naxos CD I link to collects them altogether for the first time, as played by the Queensland Symphony Orchestra under Andrew Penny. An undervalued composer, well worth checking out.

The Blogger

About me:Dutchman, married to a beautiful and highly talented artist from Shanghai. Although my education (PhD chemistry) is very much associated with the left side of the brain, I like to use my right side for my hobbies: music, art, photography.

About this blog:I started this blog in August 2006, just wanting to share what I considered interesting pieces of visual art and music. I suffered from blogging blues for most of 2008, but making a fresh start in October of that year has done wonders for my inspiration.In case you did not notice, most posts end with a small symbol... just click that for the relevant link.All pictures in my blog are hosted on blogger - if some do not show up (the red cross syndrome) it is a blogger hiccup. Right click and selecting "show picture" should do the trick.

About the reconstruction:

End March 2017 I converted thousands of posts to draft, in order to sort out potential copyright issues. Many of these will be restored in the course of the year.

Links of interest

Reactions

Reactions: please send an email to artrock2006@gmail.com or leave a comment on FaceBook.

Copyright issues?

Most of the images used in this blog are either mine, or they are used with explicit permission of the creators, or they are in the public domain. Album cover and movie poster images are sourced on the internet and they are considered fair use for discussion at a non-profit blog.

The magnifying glass based images that occur once in a while have been put in place to show images at thumbnail size, this being considered fair use (link).

If you still find a picture on this blog that you are the copyright owner of, and object against the use, please drop me an email and I will remove it.